WHITE HALL, Ark. — An Army sergeant from Pine Bluff died Sept. 29 in a roadside bombing and gunfight in Baghdad, the Defense Department said Oct. 1.

Sgt. 1st Class James D. Doster, 37, served as a convoy leader in Iraq, his mother, Billie Doster, said Oct. 1.

Doster, a White Hall High School graduate, is survived by his wife, Amanda, and two young daughters, Kathryn, 6 and Grace, 3, who live at Wamego, Kan.

“Kathryn was counting down the days until he was supposed to be home,” Doster’s mother said. “She doesn’t really understand. All she says is, ‘It’s not fair.’ They had so many plans for when he came home.”

Doster served in the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., before the unit was deployed to Iraq.

Doster left for Iraq in February. He had joined the Army 17 years ago during his second year at Hendrix College and served mostly as a recruiter, Billie Doster said. Doster served in the Gulf War and was in one of the first tanks on the battlefield in that conflict, she said.

“It’s so easy to read ‘an American soldier was killed’ in the papers. You don’t really make the connection,” Billie Doster said, quietly weeping. “When it’s your own, you find it a lot harder.

“His wife is devastated, but is clinging to the knowledge that ... he died doing something he believed in.”

Doster is the 53rd Arkansas soldier to be killed in the Iraq war.

Doster’s mother said Pentagon officials told her it will be at least a week before his body is released to his family. A full military funeral is being planned for Lakeside United Methodist Church in Pine Bluff.